It takes a brave performer to take on SantaLand Diaries, since it launched the career of David Sedaris when he read a shorter version of this droll account on NPR 20 years ago. But then again, the story is so funny that Mr. Magoo could read it monotone and break us up. The tale recounts the misadventures of an elvish Santa's helper at Macy's department store in Manhattan, and before it is over, children, you will never again wish to be reborn as a little mythical creature with turned-up shoes.

Ocean State Theatre Company is staging the one-man show through December 30, directed by Amiee Turner, and it could enthusiastically revive the local career of Lennie Watts, who was a mainstay at Theatre by the Sea in its pre-2001 incarnation. Watts puts his own stamp of personality on the story, as much so as the guy this all happened to. Without rushing, he zips through the proceedings in an hour flat, which is 10 minutes trimmed off the running time of most productions.

There is a footnote to the whole accuracy business. Although Sedaris did work as an elf at Macy's for a couple of seasons, what he presented as a true account has subsequently been labeled fiction by NPR because of its exaggerations and invented details. It's hard to believe, for example, that one-third of those willing to spend an hour shuffling through the line to speak with Santa are lonely grown-ups without a kid in tow.

But most exaggerations are entertainingly unlikely embellishments, such as a macho blowhard fellow elf, the Walrus, who thinks he's such a ladies' man that he hits on the mothers. Also, the narrator says he went around saying things like "I love Satan! Doesn't everybody?" as though it's an honest mistake any dyslexic could make. He's sure he didn't pass the drug test because "my urine had twigs and the roaches floating in it," and who would want to be deprived of that image?

Watts presents himself not as an entertainer eager to please but rather as someone having an interesting conversation with us. So his occasional bursts into outlandish mimicry pack maximum punch, such as when he demonstrates the "forced merriment" the narrator refused to display on the job or the screeching motivational cheerleader demonically shouting "Santa! Santa!" The only moment I noticed that the laid-back Watts in Sedaris persona might have pumped up more enthusiastically for better effect was when the narrator is singing a Billie Holiday-style version of "Away In a Manger" to annoy the mother who requested it.

To keep this all from coming across like standup comedy at a microphone, we are given a sense of place. Bracketed by two oversized Santa and reindeer decorations, Watts is talking to us in the locker room where the elves get into their costumes. He does so 15 minutes into the proceedings, replete in green velvet, candy cane kneesocks, and cute red booties. We can't smell the flop sweat of a life's failure or the sodden laps excited kids have had accidents on, but we can imagine. We hope that he has something stronger than cold cocoa in the Santa head sippy cup he takes from his locker.

Ocean State Theatre Company’s Fools Neil Simon's comic fable Fools is getting a talented and chuckle-packed production by Ocean State Theatre Company (through February 10), which might have mildly annoyed the playwright if he knew.

Ocean State Theatre Company’s Rent It may have been a latecomer as a rock musical, arriving 19 years after Hair rattled the boards in 1967, but Rent is overflowing with everything there is to love about both musicals and high-energy music.

Couples run amok in God of Carnage Not since Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? have theater audiences been treated to such there-but-for-the-grace-of-marriage-counselors relief over their match not being so bad after all.

A case of black and white It's inarguable that to some extent racism in America is a disease that the civil rights era did not completely inoculate this country against. The argument is about exactly what that extent has been, and David Mamet's provocative play Race explores that matter with fulminating energy and some insight.

Generation gap It’s an uneven show with a dour vision that leaves a mediciny taste in your mouth — and, I think, offers signs of a generation gap among curators.

REASONS TO BELIEVE (OR NOT) | September 24, 2014 To non-believers, the evangelical movement can look like a loud, friendly party whose invitation we’ve politely declined, but whose windows sooner or later we can’t help peeking into.

MYTHS AND DREAMS | September 24, 2014 This play stringings together bedtime stories and fevered hallucinations.

GENDER BENDERS | September 17, 2014 Gender confusion has probably been around for as long as gender conflicts.

SIMONE'S | September 17, 2014 In the Rhode Island tradition of giving directions like “it’s where the coffee milk factory used to be,” Simone’s is located where Not Your Average Bar & Grille and the ice cream shop Supreme Dairy used to be.